THEATER;Troubling Doubles in 'Jekyll and Hyde'

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.

About the Archive

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems. Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

WATCH out for a spate of ''Jekyll and Hydes.'' No fewer than three musical adaptations of the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson classic are going around. Another, a Ridiculous Theatrical Company production, which is in a class by itself and may be the most sensible approach of all, has just closed in New York. Then there's ''Mary Reilly,'' a recently published retelling of the Stevenson book written from the perspective of a maid in Dr. Jekyll's employ.

What then is going on here? Can there be a renewed fascination with the eternal conflict between and the overlapping of good and evil, in search of a contemporary moral comment? Or should a cynical observer simply perceive a certain trendiness and opportunism by writers and producers under the influence of ''Phantom of the Opera'' - and how many versions of that old tale have recently been among us?

Actually, the ''Jekyll and Hyde'' that is being announced as a world premiere at the George Street Playhouse, through April 8, is a revision of the musical ''After You, Mr. Hyde,'' which was seen at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., in 1970.

It is a completely conventional, thoroughly uninteresting musical rooted in the romantic traditions of operetta (minus the essential melodiousness) with a desultory bow in the direction of spooky melodrama (without the chills, thrills and tingles).

Leonora Thuna's book has no discernible point of view, seeming rather more bothered about the wistful longing of two stock female characters over what they presume to be the separate men of the title than with the fabled, tortured protagonist of the split soul.

That concern leads to one of the more telling songs in an otherwise bland score, the duet ''Quite Like Him,'' in which Lucy Turner (a maid Hyde abducts from a brothel, in the manner of the famed Phantom) and Margaret Cavendish (a new character, Dr. Jekyll's pure fiancee) sing of their attraction for the other man.

An all-out ensemble near the end, a reprise of ''Very, Very Good,'' validates what had previously seemed like an inane song wherein a silly Victorian three-man chorus assumes that whatever Dr. Henry Jekyll's doing, ''it must be something very, very good.'' To this lowly estate, Dr. Jekyll's colleague Dr. Lanyon, the lawyer Gabriel Utterson - the tale's original narrators - and the banker Richard Enfield have been brought, though the roles are most adeptly handled by Jamie Ross, David Sabin and James Judy, respectively.

Otherwise, Norman Sachs's naive songs build busily but go nowhere, and Mel Mandel's lyrics are as inventive as rhyming ''notion'' with ''potion.'' (Sample: ''The good in him emerges/purged of evil urges.'') While the whole project is a minor league effort, the performance of John Cullum in the leading roles is a major disappointment. The singing actor, or acting singer - and he has been, impressively, both, though not here - is severely let down by what appears to have been conceived in stereotype and written as a sketch, and his often strained, pinched singing is not helpful.

The fumbling Dr. Jekyll's emergence from meek pastiness to petty meanness - with a cape and a red scarf - is simply unamazing. It is hard to get involved with either of the character's extremes, and it seems plain that neither Ms. Thuna nor Mr. Cullum has.

Even the obvious notion of the spunkiness of evil and the tediousness of good remains unexplored and is further contradicted by the inelegance of the Edward Hyde character. Whatever Dr. Jekyll is up to is literally stated or declaimed - ''to redefine man's nature'' - with little attention to subtleties or implications about the hypocrisy of the Victorian age, or ours.

While the various turns of events are mostly ineffectually written, the book takes a wild turn toward outlandish bad taste with a first-act curtain that has Hyde heckling actors in a foolish on-stage play that was perhaps intended to be a spoof. From a seat among the audience, he drags Lucy into the action and rapes her, cackling vilely.

Mostly, the performances are on a generally high professional level, with Rebecca Baxter giving an affecting dimension to Lucy, and Anne Kerry Ford as a properly long-suffering Margaret.

The George Street production, though dully directed by Gregory S. Hurst, is so unstintingly elaborate and skillful, with varied lighting by Donald Holder and inventive sets by Deborah Jasien, that it could have enhanced a purposeful musical. But did anyone really mean to lavish so much technical expertise upon a tale about the transformation of a boob to a boor?

The box office number is (201) 246-7469.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section NJ, Page 12 of the National edition with the headline: THEATER; Troubling Doubles in 'Jekyll and Hyde'. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe